If you’re one of the thousands of people in the country who took out a short term, payday loan with Wonga, the chances are you shouldn’t have been given the money in the first place.

Updates about Wonga refunds

UPDATE: 29 January 2020 at 6 pm

Emails have been sent out confirming the Wonga refund amounts.

The Joint Administrators have declared a first and final dividend of 4.3p in the £.

Here’s the email:

Important update about your Wonga Claim

Dear XXXXXX

Case Number: XXXXXXThird Party Reference:

WDFC UK Limited – In Administration (the Company)

The Joint Administrators are now in a position to declare a first and final dividend of 4.3p in the £.

You will receive a payment of £XX.XX. Your payment represents 4.3p in the £ on your agreed claim value of £XX.XX

Please note, if you are represented by a CMC/Third Party and have provided us with instructions that your CMC/Third Party representative should be paid on your behalf, the above amount will be paid to your CMC/Third Party representative directly.

As you will be aware from previous correspondence to you, the payment you will receive is significantly smaller than your Accepted Claim Value. This is because the total value of all accepted claims for customers/creditors significantly exceeds the money available to be shared out.

As per our previous assessment email, we have also taken steps to update your credit file in accordance with the outcome of your assessment. All credit file updates in association with this claim should be completed within approximately 45 days of this correspondence.

If you are being represented by a CMC/Third Party, a copy of this email has been sent to your CMC/Third Party representative.

When will I receive my final dividend payment?

As a result of the volume of dividend payments due to customers/creditors, you will receive your payment within four weeks of this email. Please note that if you have recently provided your bank detail updates to the Customer Care team, your payment may take longer to receive while your updates are processed.

The Wonga Customer Care team are no longer able to accept any bank detail updates. If you do not receive your payment within four weeks, please contact the Wonga Customer Care team using the details provided below.

For more information in relation to the dividend payment, please visit our FAQs.

If you have any urgent queries that are not answered by our FAQs, please contact the Wonga Customer Care Centre at [email protected] or on 020 7138 8330.

It is important to note that the Customer Care team will be experiencing higher than usual volumes of calls and emails. Therefore it may take them longer to respond.

A copy of the Joint Administrators’ receipts and payments account to date and dividend disclosure can be found by accessing the link below:

What this means

Now, I was expecting it to be a fair bit higher, to be honest, and this will be a huge blow to many who started their affordability claims with Wonga when they were still running.

There were a total of £535,636,017.75 creditor claims submitted.

However, there was only £23,090,071.32 available to pay, which is how they came up with the 4.3p in £.

Payments of the 4.3p to the £ will be made later than expected.

We had originally been quoted 30 January 2020 for refunds, but now it appears that payments will be made within four weeks.

The reason the payments are so low, and why a refund will be longer than expected, is due to the number of people who applied for refunds.

I really don’t think they could predict how many would come forward.

How much do people really get back?

A few of the Skint Dad community have shared how much they’ll receive.

One reader told us that the offer is “cheeky, but better than nothing”.

She was due a refund of £522.42 but is getting a payout of £22.52.

Another reader was due £1,269.45 and will get a £54.72 refund.

She told us, “i am actually livid. I put in a claim with Wonga and it went to the FOS, but then they went into administration. I feel cheated!”

Also, one reader was due £513.43, but has been given a refund of £22.13.

UPDATE: 29 January 2020 at 12 pm

No further communications have been received and another email is expected before 30 January 2020.

It is likely an email will be received on 30 January confirming the Wonga refund amount and payments will be made shortly after.

There is no point trying to contact Wonga as they won’t be able to give you any answers.

UPDATE: Friday 10 January 2020

Emails were sent out to anyone who claimed for a Wonga refund on or around 10th January.

The emails confirmed that figures for the refunds would be made by 30 January 2020.

Their email full email said:

Update on your Wonga claim

Dear XXXX

Case Number: XXXXXXXXX Third Party Reference:

We previously emailed you in relation to your successful claim in the Wonga administration. At the end of January, we will communicate by email the amount you will be due to receive as a dividend.

Please be aware, the payment you receive will be considerably smaller than your accepted claim value.

We will make an electronic payment (bank transfer) to your bank account. The account number we have on file for you ends with these 4 digits: ********.

If these 4 digits are correct, there is no need for you to do anything.

If these 4 digits are incorrect, please contact us immediately by sending an email to [email protected] . We will reply to you with a secure link to upload your new details. Don’t forget to include your full name, date of birth and claim case number.

It is your responsibility to update your bank details if they are not correct.

Kind regards,

The Joint Administrators

Also, if you have changed bank details since using Wonga, you must follow the link in the email and update your details.

They also made clear that “the payment you receive will be considerably smaller than your accepted claim value.”

Even if your claim was assessed to be accepted, the figures quoted won’t be what you get.

NOBODY – NOONE – has had confirmed what percentage anyone will get yet, so please don’t be scaremongered by what you read elsewhere.

Wonga affordability complaint

We’ve had many (too many) loans from Wonga in the past…and they start to form a pattern:

Was it unaffordable?

Did they give you loan after loan and it was clear you weren’t managing the money?

Did you miss repayment dates?

If it’s a yes, you could look to claim compensation from Wonga – even now they are in administration. But you needed to do so before 30 September 2019.

You will get back interest and charges if they agree with your claim.

Had a loan with Wonga just as they went into administration? Read up on what happens next.

Already put a complaint in

If you’ve already put a complaint into Wonga, once it’s been assessed (and they agree to refund you interest payments), you are going to need to wait a while to get paid.

The administrator of Wonga has now confirmed that all claims must be submitted by 30 September 2019 or they may not be considered for payment.

As at 31 August 2019, the administrators have said that 389,621 claims for a Wonga refund are eligible.

But I bet there are still more people who can look to claim.

Not put a complaint in yet

Do not for one second think that Wonga going into administration means you won’t be able to put in a redress claim.

Back in September 2018, not long after they went into administration, Wonga was telling people to put in an affordability claim.

“Those customers with redress claims should continue to approach the company in administration. These claims will then be assessed and if valid dealt with as unsecured creditors of the administration estate.”

And, people did.

In fact, the administrators for Wonga, accountants Grant Thornton, have found that people have been claiming – by the bucket loads!

By February 2019, four times the amount of people have put in a complaint than they had expected … and they’ll be more to come.

Grant Thornton set up a portal for customers so you can make a claim online, rather than having to put the complaint in writing (via email is fine).

The portal went live on 11 April 2019.

Don’t write or email to Wonga to ask for a refund. Instead, take a look at how to easily get a Wonga refund.

Please, please do not go to a claims management company to do this. Even Wonga and Grant Thronton say not to use one. It will cost you money to use them, and it won’t speed up the process.

All claims must be submitted by 30 September 2019 or they may not be considered for payment.

If you have not put in a claim before 30 September 2019, you will no longer be able to claim for a Wonga refund.

You no longer need to give them any details about your complaint. Previously you had to make clear that you were making an unaffordable loan complaint – and tell them why you couldn’t afford it (late payments, repeated loans). However, this new form takes all that away.

After you’ve completed, they will be able to match if you were a Wonga customer and you need to take no other action.

If you complete the form and it is unable to match you as a Wonga customer, you’re able to try again with different details.

You will get an email to confirm your claim has been submitted.

Again, this is going to take some time for it to go through their process before you get any money back, but it’s well worth doing.

It is expected that payments to accepted claims will be made within four months of 30 September 2019 (so by 30 January 2020).

There have been hundreds of thousands of people apply for payday loans with Wonga, and I’m sure so many of them were not really affordable. I know I’m one of those people.

Please do not let this unethical company get away with making profits for running a business that targeted financially vulnerable people.

Please do get back some of the money back you deserve.

I’ve claimed before. Can I claim again?

If you’ve already had redress (compensation) from Wonga in the past then you won’t be able to make a second claim.

They would have already looked at your historic loans and considered that you needed to receive a refund.

However, if you took out new loans since you got redressed, then you are able to put in a new refund claim if you believe they were unaffordable.

But the bad news…

Yes, it’s great that so many people are putting in complaints and it just goes to show how badly Wonga was at doing business.

However, this does leave an issue about the compensation itself.

Wonga not only have people looking to claim compensation but likely have creditors who are owed money too.

The more people make a claim, the share of the pot for compensation will just get smaller.